Coveters, Producers and Consumers in the great Geo-political war of the 21st century

Each box-cell in the above Infograph carries the chemical symbol for key minerals that are found deep inside the geological bowels of our planet earth. They are mined, exported and get consumed for various industrial purposes and in various manufacturing processes by countries around the world.

Who produces the minerals most?

China does… and will be doing so for a long, long time in the future.

And that is precisely why China is a would-be superpower … and not because of other more commonly known reasons that it has the biggest population in the world with the biggest army armed to the teeth with great big nuclear ballistic missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers …. And also certainly not because it is recognised today to be a giant growing economy and technological juggernaut ….

And that’s exactly why AMERICA will never allow China to become the super-power it wants to be …

Western imperialism expanded its sway across continents since the time of the Roman Empire across long eras in history right up to the time the Great British Empire flew its flag of colonial hegemony worldwide for over 6 centuries. Why was western imperialism so relentlessly and overpoweringly expansionist? Because it had no other choice left but to become the beast it did become in world history.

It had to ceaselessly expand territorially mainly driven by the relentless search for raw-material sources needed to feed and run its global “military-industrial complex” — of men, machinery and money. That complex had humongous appetite for agricultural and precious mineral commodities too of the kind depicted in the above Infograph.

If it was possible today as it was in the history of the last 2 millennia, Western imperialism would certainly exert itself in the same way as it did historically to expand and infiltrate with its military might right into China for no other reason other than to commandeer, command and control the vast productive capacities China evidently owns as seen in the Infograph above .

But then 21st century geo-political realities are not what they were in the last 2000 years. Western Imperialism is being matched today, blow for blow, by aggressive Chinese Imperialism which is no longer an easy pushover militarily, economically and adversarially for the West as it used to be hitherto. The Chinese Dragon has come here to stay in the 21st century as an indomitable would-be superpower that’s not going to shy away from challenging the incumbent-superpower of the world, the USA. Period.

The only way that Western Imperialism can in this century prevail over Chinese Imperialism is to fashion a new model of expansion different from the one that worked in the last 2000 years. What is that model?

Rather than going all out to conquer China’s mineral-wealth and mineral-processing productive capacities, the job of western civilisation will now have be to prevent and obstruct China from being able to exploit and gain advantage from such vast wealth. The neo-geo-strategic game-plan of Western imperialism will now have to change from “playing offence” to “playing obstruct” .

How will America’s new game plan play out?

Well… in broad strategic terms, here is what it could be … :

If your enemy is the world’s biggest Producer of mineral-resources and if you want to “obstruct” his growing and advancing influence in the world because you know well that you cannot effectively “offend” and overcome him, the next best thing to do is to encircle and enlarge your own hegemonic sway and influence in the world over nations that are Consumers of such mineral-resources. In other words , the geo-political strategy should be to effectively deprive the Producer of market-places around the world wherever a Consumer may be found who is able and willing to buy from China .

There are many ways to do so …. and we already have seen them put into motion across the world in the first two decades of the 21st century e.g.:

The rapid roll-back of Globalisation as the cornerstone of world-trade, proliferating tariff-wars, protectionism, dismantling of free-market structures, currency-wars (in which new-age “crypto-currency markets” are mini-theatres in guerrilla-tactical engagement), imposition of savage and sweeping economic sanctions, the creeping emasculation of multi-lateral trade agreements and financial covenants (UN, WTO etc.) .

And then against such relentless attacks on the Consumer-Demand side in the war of the two imperialistic titans , we see China too push back from the dominant Producer-Supply-side with its own weapons of hegemonic resistance e.g. BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), “soft” lending to third-world countries for infrastructure building and securing mining-lease rights and concessions, massive FDI investments in the first-world countries, generous bilateral trade-pacts with friendly and neutral countries (ASEAN, RCEP -Regional-Comprehensive-Economic-Partnership) etc. currency-meddling and fiddling if not manipulation and daring intellectual-property (IP) raids ….

Thus, this war between the USA and China is essentially a war between the worlds largest producer of minerals, China, and the gang of western imperialists, led by the USA, that for last 20 centuries in history has been the worlds largest coveter of mineral-resources.

In that war between coveters and producers, the massive costs of war, financial and non-financial, that will be inevitably incurred will be picked by who? Yes, you guessed it right ! It is going to be the consumer —- we in the rest of the world.

Sudarshan Madabushi